I think we should look at the whole idea of Globalism from another angle in order to argue against its further growth.
There has been a sort of Globalism that has been in existence for some 2000 years or so since the spread of Christianity and the Bible from the middle east outward to the rest of the world. It has been global in the cultural, religious, literary and intellectual sense, but global nonetheless. It might be argued that the philosophies, ideas and beliefs of the Greeks, Hebrews and Orientals before Christianity reached out to small numbers of peoples within most of the ‘known’ world during their respective high periods. Most well-read people in recent centuries will have probably have read literature from America, North and South, Russia, Australia, France, Italy, Germany and maybe even Africa and Asia.
There have been trading between nations and even between nations in different continents throughout recorded history. There have been attempts at some sort of establishment of a global superstate, the Roman empire for example.
The truth is that a form of globalism already exists, particularly in the world of the Arts, culture, ideas and entertainment. And the real clincher in this is the Internet, the world wide web, which allows the user pretty much instant access to anything. We can buy almost any product online via the likes of Amazon and Ebay.
So we have potential exposure to virtually all cultures, religions, political ideas and so forth. We can buy virtually anything we want and we can communicate with people in almost all countries in the world. Indeed we can travel to most countries in the world. In light of this, I would say that we already have Globalism, it has arrived and is well established. What we need to do is define the Globalism that we want and the Globalism that we don’t.
The Globalism that we may not want and the one that people fear is the Globalism of centralised supranational organisations (the EU being the best example) that swallow up individual nations and dictate a common set of values and morals for all their countries. People see their national and local identities being eroded, their values being attacked and their morals pushed aside and declared invalid, or worse, declared prejudiced in some way. There is a suspicion that powerful people in these organisations wish to dilute national and religious identity in order to produce a more compliant individual who will look to big government for validation and to multinationals for their pleasure and leisure. Historically, the forced imposition of a centralised ideology which involves wiping away traditions and local identities doesn’t end well and should be avoided.
It should be pointed out that the current balancing act between globalism and tradition is not even. Influential cultural and monied institutions, particularly in the West such as Hollywood, the Banking world, the EU, socially liberal governments and media giants like Google and Facebook all push the one world, one size fits all ideology. Whereas the opposite should be encouraged, more should be done to preserve the traditional elements of people’s lives, as these are the elements that tend to give them meaning and purpose, and will give rise to a healthier and more contented populace.
So we can say with some validity that most of us, conservative or liberal, already live with and, to an extent, support Globalism. But that we also want to retain our existing cultural diversity, established and cherished over many generations, as this is healthy and generally good for citizens who wish to belong and to make sense of life: and that the best way to do that is a non-aggressive globalism that can be dipped into by the individual but one that recognises the humanity of the traditional (moral, cultural, familial and national) and does not pursue an imposed uniform identity on others.
